


Tales of Gotham

by InfiniteWorldsMeow



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Batman - Freeform, Batman hodgepodge, Bruce Wayne - Freeform, Dick Grayson - Freeform, EFF Your Canons, F/F, F/M, Gotham, M/M, No Romance For Joker, Penguin and Riddler will get married, Undecided about Batman and Robin hooking up, making shit up, time skip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-11-02 05:56:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20644577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfiniteWorldsMeow/pseuds/InfiniteWorldsMeow
Summary: Batman hodgepodge brought to you by someone who mostly watched the shows and movies.





	Tales of Gotham

### Chaos Part 1

Later than usual, his dad came into the apartment. Blood on his clothes wasn’t different from before, but unlike the other times when he was nonchalant about it, today he seemed out of sorts. His dad didn’t ask about homework. He just went straight to the liquor cabinet and drank several gulps of whiskey. Without bothering to wipe off any of the blood, he sank down onto his loveseat.

“Your mom is dead. When the cops come asking around, you tell them she went to the bank to cash a check.”

He shrugged. “Okay.” It sucked that his mom wouldn’t be around because she was a much better cook than his dad. Other dads could barbecue, but his couldn’t even do that much. Later on, he’d go out to buy dinner since his dad would probably fall asleep drunk today. There was no sign of his dad putting the bottle down, so he just went to his room and watched tv.

The first thing that appeared on local channels was a bank robbery where a local woman was killed. “Oh that’s, Mom,” he said while looking at the security footage the news showed before the shooting. The bank looked like the one he saw in photos that had been on the kitchen table. While he wasn’t allowed to hear their plans, he knew his parents robbed banks together, and one of them usually pretended to be a civilian. This must have been his mom’s turn, but the cops hadn’t figured out she was in on the job. Funnily enough, she was killed by a stray bullet from the cops who were shooting at the masked robber who matched his dad’s body type. He shook his head as he sipped from his grape soda. “It really is crazy out there.”

The next weekend, he and his dad went to his mom’s funeral. As a good son, he looked very sad for the occasion. Reporters came up to him and like he was instructed, he cried on camera telling the reporter, “I don’t know how we’re gonna get by with just the two of us, but my mom was really strong. She taught me to work hard, so that’s what we’ll do.” The reporter tearfully said that she felt sorry for his loss while making sure the camera caught the perfect angle of her hugging him. When he and his dad got home from the funeral, he didn’t want to take off his suit. It was the nicest thing he had ever worn.

“Stop fucking around. I gotta get it back to my friend before the morning.” His dad had started drinking on the drive home, so he was already unsteady on his feet and headed to his spot on the couch. Tear tracks had dried salty on his face, but he didn’t attempt to clean it as he watched the donations site on his phone. “Playing it tough was the right thing to do. People don’t like handing out money if they think you’re a bum.”

“Yeah, it’s the most money we’d made from donations. I guess because someone actually died this time, and it’s been on the news for a…week.” He paused as he heard his dad begin sobbing. In order for him not to hear crying all night again, he got a fresh whiskey bottle and sat it next to his dad’s nearly empty one.

Knowing that his dad wouldn’t be a nuisance that night, he went outside on the balcony to look down at the city. Everything about Gotham bored him. Nothing made it stick out from any other big city, and there wasn’t anything to do. He draped his body over the railing and sighed. What he would give to see real excitement. A few buildings across from him, someone else came out on their balcony. With his head leaning sideways on his hands, he watched as what appeared to be a man take off his suit jacket and tie. Without looking back once, the man climbed over the railing and jumped. From his angle, he couldn’t see the guy land but definitely heard the thump.

“Well that was interesting.” He’d find out in the morning that his mother’s death was pushed out of the news by the biggest businesses in Gotham going belly up overnight. Thousands lost their jobs, including his dad, and that wasn’t the last suicide he watched as more people became desperate. In the pit of his belly, a spark of a strange feeling that he couldn’t describe began tingling in the emptiness he was used to. It was as if he was anticipating something, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

***

It took two years for everything to truly go to shit. At first, the financial institutions tried to stick it out, but the big bosses fled, and the bailouts didn’t come. Parts of Gotham were being sold off to the highest bidders on the cheap, so people with money didn’t want the city to get back on its feet. For him, it was pretty fun. School was out because the teachers left for cities where they would actually get paid, and even though regular jobs went bust, there was always someone willing to give you a few hundred dollars to burn a building down. The best thing was if he kept his dad drunk and paid the rent, he was left to his own devices. There was one thing that bothered him. The cops had gone silent. A good number of them had given up on their jobs, but this was different. When you did see a cop, they were talking on their radio and seemed to be reporting just the general conditions, but they would clam up if they saw you watching them. His instincts told him to keep a low profile, so he took less jobs and did what the cops did; he just watched.

He didn’t have to wait long. That night, instead of the bright lights from fires and squeal of sirens, the loud hum of military vehicles was heard throughout Gotham. Even his dad sobered up and called his criminal friends to see who had got busted. The conversations were too boring, so he went on the balcony with a bowl of chips to see what was happening. It was a real good show.

On the streets, soldiers pursued criminals on foot, and if they managed to get out of sight, a drone fired from the sky. As their bodies were being dumped into an accompanying garbage truck, doors being smashed through could be heard all night. It was too far to see exactly which floors were targeted in the buildings across the way, so he grabbed binoculars from inside the apartment. His dad turned the lights off and sat next to him while he narrated what only he could see from the lens.

“They found Lenny’s gun supply. Oh, Lenny's shooting bac-ah, it’s over. He was shot in the head by a sniper.”

“Fuck!” his dad cursed beside him.

“Hey! Someone got them!”

“Got who?”

“The soldiers on that street. The sniper got thrown from the roof, so now there’s shooting up there and down there.” He was so excited that he kept moving the binoculars up and down so he wouldn’t miss anything.

His dad clamped his hand on the binoculars so he was forced to keep his gaze on the ground. “They took out the snipers to defend that area. What can you make out?”

Exasperated that he was missing half the battle, he hurriedly squinted until he could make out exactly where the main firefight was. “Since when does that old man running the hardware store have so many guns?”

His dad didn’t answer him because he immediately got on the phone. “Falcone made a deal with the cops. He’s killing all our people. If we don’t stop him, he’s gonna…” From the phone rang out gunshots. His dad’s shoulders slumped as he snapped the phone in two. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Don’t stay out here all night, or you might bring attention to us. I’m getting a drink.”

Alone on the balcony, he got to watch the show uninterrupted. This was better than watching buildings burn.

Before his dad passed out, he went to his room and pretended to sleep. Long into his dad’s alcoholic coma though, he quietly snuck out onto the balcony where he scaled down the apartment when the drones had moved on.


End file.
